Paulita and Tony Flores took their vows in an elegant rotunda with marble floors amid glimmering chandeliers and a bubbling fountain.
It didn’t bother them that a room down the hall showcased caskets and urns. Or that the building was surrounded by a cemetery with 100,000 gravestones on 60 acres. Or that on other days, the facility hosts something a lot more somber — funerals.
And they’re not alone. The Floreses’ wedding last month at the Community Life Center at Washington Park East Cemetery on Indianapolis’ Far Eastside illustrates a growing trend.
Well, aws Don Imus said, you might as well have your wedding at a funeral home, because after you’re done you’re going to wish you were dead.
This is the flip side of fewer and fewer people having a live connection with a congregation and of churches restricting weddings to those who do have such a connection. As I read the wedding pages of the newspapers I see fewer and fewer clergy wedding officiants and more friends of the couple.
There are not a few Episcopal churches that are re-thinking that old guideline that the couple should have a connection to the congregation and instead are marketing their facility as a wedding venue. St. Clement’s in Honolulu and St. James in Florence are two well known examples, but there are many in my city as well. Its steadier money than film location fees.
With so many folks being cremated, funeral homes are finally feeling the crunch of the economy.
So one would be advised to check and see if they do same sex weddings before taking grandma’s final arrangements there lest her eternal rest be disturbed.
LOL, David. There is a nearly endless supply of potential puns with this one. My first thought was “eewwwww” and then, “well, maybe it’s fitting!”
First thought — have a wedding where you have funerals, ick!
Second thought — why not? we do that with churches too
Third thought — uh, what the heck happened to church????